The ethcial and legal issues for behavioral health professionals have changed considerably over the past decade. This course explores current ethical and legal issues in the behavioral health field. The focus of the class is to enhance the professional development of health care professionals, so as to adhere to the ethical codes, standards of conduct, legal statutes, and certification/licensing regulations of disciplines represented in the treatment process. It addresses how to minimize exposure to possible legal or ethical violations. It starts with macro-ethical principles, and moves into micro-ethical principles. Recent relevant case rulings are presented. The course distinguishes between what is legal, ethical and moral.

This course begins with the scientific, research basis of non-local medicine and incorporates what physicians already know about healing into psychotherapy, that there is another level to health, the spiritual dimension. It bridges the gap between therapy and spirituality by finding ways to incorporate spirituality into therapy, differentiate between religion and spirituality and find new ways to respond to patients through contemplative listening. This course allows participants to find space for spiritualy in their clinical practice, explores research findings on the power of meditation and prayer in therapy, and teaches participants how to take a patient's religious history and how to put faith into clinical practice. It is a course firmly rooted in the 12 steps, and is highly interactive and introspective.

As the addiction field is moving into the technology revolution the learning curve is steep. The process of "getting it" will accelerate if the field is to gain a momentum of its own and overcome its cautiousness about technology. There will be a day when clinicians will find it hard to believe that we ever did treatment as we have in the past. But to get there, the field needs to be better informed of the advantages and disadvantages of cyber counseling and the skills needed in the future to counsel in cyberspace. The learning curve for counselors is steep but one that must be faced quickly as cyber counseling is a reality we all must face. This course will discuss cyber counseling, the knowledge and skills required of counselors it and theprocedures to use in online clinical supervision systems. It will also review future technologies.